1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of searching or retrieving from a document database a document or documents having contents similar to those of a document designated by a user (hereinafter referred to as a query document). Further, the present invention is concerned with a document retrieving system for carrying out the above-mentioned method.
A natural language retrieval system is disclosed in W. B. Frakes at el.: INFORMATION RETRIEVAL, Prentice Hall PTR, 1992, D. Harman: PANKING ALGORITHMS, pp. 363–389.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, there has arisen an increasing demand for a knowledge management system designed for sharing or communimizing knowledges of individuals belonging to an organization for the purpose of reuse thereof with a view to enhancing efficiency and quality of the businesses or works performed internally of the organization. In particular, in the knowledge management system put to practical use in the enterprise or the like, there is an increasing demand for documentation of experiences of learned men and know-how for sharing and common use as knowledge.
Furthermore, in accompanying with popularization of the internet, experiences of learned men and know-how are now available as the documents in most of the countries of the world, involving an increasing demand for sharing and practical use of them.
Such being the circumstances, endeavor is being paid on development of the facility capable of making available with ease and pertinence the knowledge desired by the user from a large amount of knowledge accumulated internally of an organization.